Tsunami

The Asian Tsunami was an undersea earthquake that occurred in the Indian Ocean off the western coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia on the 26th January, 2004 at 7:58 am local time.

The earthquake and it’s Tsunami killed more than 200,000 people. Ranging from 8.0 to 9.3 on the Richter scale; Scientists reported that the earthquake itself lasted close to ten minutes when most major earthquakes last no more than a few seconds. It caused the entire planet to vibrate.

The furthest recorded death from the epicentre of the Tsunami occurred in South Africa, 8,000 km away.

Initially we had no idea of the devastation and thought it was just a local king tide. The next few days we started receiving text messages from home telling us of all the loss of life. We were very lucky to have escaped unharmed. We decided to go back and help with the Auroville Tsunami Relief which was very organised and had teams going into villages to help in the clean up.

We were staying in accommodation 200 meters from the ocean - the Tsunami came in 150 meters. We were lucky!

view Tsunami Gallery here